Event Scheduler

Part of updating the MySQL Certifications is trying out all the new features that have appeared with 5.1 and 6.0. Currently I am working with 5.1.24-rc on a Mac and 6.0 on Ubuntu and looking for items to add to the exams. The Event Scheduler is sure to become one of those Swiss Army Knife tools that we will wonder how we ever accomplished anything without.

I usually experiment with very simple tasks.

CREATE EVENT x1_event ON SCHEDULE AT '2008-07-16 14:01:01' DO INSERT INTO x1 VALUES (9,'nine');

SHOW EVENTS did exactly that. And just after 14:01, I found the new row in my x1 table.

So now I am thinking of a dozen think I used to do with cron(1) or at(1) that I could do with the event scheduler.

Warning: There are ramifications with backups and the event scheduler that I will not go into details here. But for now do not try to run your backups with event scheduler. The engineers are doing their magic right now and will surely dazzle us with their brilliance.

So hit the Event Scheduler documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/6.0/en/events.html